Why I started buying my gluten-free ingredients in bulk

All right, this morning I am whipping up some of our favorite all-purpose gluten-free flour. It is a blend of several different flours. If you guys have been here for a while, then you know that we eat gluten-free. A few of our kids have shown symptoms, but one of our children specifically was diagnosed with celiac disease at the age of four. She's 13 now, so we've been gluten-free for eight years. It's kind of easier just to transition everybody to gluten-free. With celiac disease, it's not just like a sensitivity. It really can cause damage. It actually can destroy their gut lining, leading to malnutrition, secondary things like osteoporosis or even cancer. So it's very serious, and even little things like cross-contamination matter. For example, using the same tools in gluten-free flours and then preparing something gluten-free can lead to cross-contamination and still cause a reaction in a person with celiac disease. So when she was first diagnosed, we were buying a lot of store-bought gluten-free things, which was great because I needed something in the interim as I was learning and relearning everything that I knew about baking. Reading ingredient labels like a full-time job and realizing that gluten and additives that are derived from gluten sources are in everything. Those things that were certified gluten-free that I knew were safe for my daughter to consume came with a pretty hefty price tag and honestly like not a great texture. A lot of the times the bread is either really dense or really dry or cakes and cupcakes just crumble and fall apart, really, really leaving a lot to be desired. It didn't take me long to realize that if we wanted to not sacrifice quality and still keep our family safe with gluten-free foods, we were going to need to learn how to prepare them ourselves, which we did. We used, thankfully again, there's so much out there now in the way of prepared gluten-free things. We were able to buy premixed gluten-free flour blends that are like cup-for-cup replacements. So you can use your normal recipes and then take one cup of normal flour, what would be, and use one cup of this gluten-free flour replacer and they turned out great. We had so many friends tell us like this is amazing, these pancakes are great, like raving about cakes and stuff that I would bake, you know, not being able to tell or like the goal is always I didn't even know this was gluten-free, which I feel like is pretty easy to achieve with brownies and certain things. But usually it's like this is really good for gluten-free, like this is so good for gluten-free, this is the best gluten-free whatever I've ever had. So while that was like a great compliment and is honestly what we lived by for how many years, I don't know, six years, it was not the gold star standard, you know. I was like I know this can be better. I also was starting to feel a little bit convicted, I guess, about just like the lack of nutrition. I think it's hard to see so many of my friends or family members making this beautiful sourdough knowing like how good sourdough is for your body. Some of my friends getting into fresh milling their own flour so they're really getting so many vital nutrients from their food and knowing that so much of what's in these pre-made gluten-free flours is tapioca starch, potato starch, rice starch. And while we're still using those ingredients, I decided I wanted to try to make things as nutrient-dense as possible, the best quality possible. And so I started mixing up my own flour blends and that has allowed me to create a mostly organic blend of gluten-free flour replacement. And I will tell you over the last nine years, we have found so many tips and tricks and hacks. If that's something you guys are interested in me sharing more of, I would love to. One of the biggest ones though, if you are just starting out and you are going to be making things from scratch, start with one of those gluten-free flour blends I was talking about until you kind of get your bearings because gluten-free baking is different. The hydration of the different grains is different and so there's a bit of a learning curve with the amount of liquid to use, the amount of oils, etc. And there's a couple options that we have used and loved. There are a few that we haven't loved. Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour replacer is probably the number one that we've used for years and years. If you're going to buy that, buy that through Azure Standard. That is the company we get all of our bulk pantry supplies in. It's going to save you so much money. A 25-pound bag of Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour is, I think it's like between 58 and 62 depending on if it's on sale there. And from Bob's Red Mill website, it's $100. Walmart or other grocery stores only sell tiny bags and once you add those up to 25 pounds, you're going to be spending so much more. So if you are baking or if you're gluten-free, that is the number one thing that I could tell you is set up an Azure Standard account. We have a link if you want to get a discount on your first order. But that's going to save you so much money as you are learning to bake more at home from scratch. And it's just going to make your gluten-free life so much better. I really can't put that into words or stress it enough. In the long run, the amount you would spend just buying gluten-free breads like Canyon Bakehouse, which is one of the better ones quality-wise that I found in a grocery store, and you're talking at a minimum $6 for a small loaf of bread. If you have a large family, like that's not even getting you through a whole couple of days. And the cool thing is at Azure you can get, I mean any pantry staples, you can get your vanilla extract, you can get your salt, all of these things that you may use or want to store that will store for up to a year in your pantry and you can just go through them. You buy them in bulk and then you save a lot of money over the year. When I'm not even joking when I tell you we literally saved thousands of dollars. I have done the math. I think one year we saved over $2,000 just from bulk buying. So that is the only way I could do this. Like there's no way I could go to the store and buy little bags of all of these different specialty flowers and bulk buy. So I initially set out to find an even cheaper way to bake gluten-free for my family than buying those pre-made flowers. Well I didn't find that. What I did find is that for the same price I was able to create a completely organic blend that functions, hold on, even better. Which is really hard to believe because like I said the standard is usually, oh this is really good for gluten-free. But the first pancakes I made with this, and this is not my first video, like I made several flour blends. The first, the first pancakes I made were a flop. They, it was terrible. They were so dense. They were so rock hard. There's definitely a science, obviously chemistry involved in baking. This is like just the tiniest amount of xanthan gum in which I originally wanted to create a recipe that didn't use gums at all. Thinking when I see that on the list I'm like oh I'd rather avoid that. When I realized that for this much flour this is the amount of xanthan gum that goes in it, I'm actually not all that concerned about it. This is just like half of what we probably would normally use in a month. It's so much easier to mix in a small quantity and ride it the other way. And that was a pain in the butt. So now I'm just doing smaller quantities at one time. So this will go into one of these five gallon food grade buckets. They are food safe. They have gamma seal lids on them which are airtight and will keep everything super fresh. I'm terrified I'm gonna accidentally pour it all over the counter because that wouldn't be the first time. The first time I made my own flour it looked like, looked like I turned the mixer on full speed with just dry flour in the bowl. It's everywhere. Crazy. So I might do this twice and actually I could mix this twice because that bucket is only filled to here. So I can go ahead and do another batch of that. Fill this up and we will be stocked up between this and then making the bread flour for probably two months, two to three months worth of flour in one go.